Chris Hedges's Blog, page 38

5 Spray Planes Trying to Save Kenya From Billions of Locusts

NASUULU CONSERVANCY, Kenya—As locusts by the billions — yes, billions — descend on parts of Kenya in the worst outbreak in 70 years, small planes are flying low over affected areas to spray pesticides in what experts call the only effective control.

It is challenging work, especially in remote areas where mobile phone signals are absent and ground crews cannot quickly communicate coordinates to flight teams.

The ground crews are in “the most woeful terrains,” Marcus Dunn, a pilot and the director at Farmland Aviation, said Saturday. “If there is no network, then the fellow on a boda boda (motorcycle), he has to rush off now and go and get a network.”

Just five planes are currently spraying as Kenyan and other authorities try to stop the locusts from spreading to neighboring Uganda and South Sudan. The United Nations has said $76 million is needed immediately to widen such efforts across East Africa.

A fast response is crucial. Experts warn that if left unchecked, the number of locusts could grow by 500 times by June, when drier weather will help bring the outbreak under control.

The finger-length locusts swept into Kenya from Somalia and Ethiopia after unusually heavy rains in recent months, decimating crops in some areas and threatening millions of vulnerable people with a hunger crisis.

Somalia’s agriculture ministry on Sunday called the outbreak a national emergency and major threat to the country’s fragile food security, saying the “uncommonly large” locust swarms are consuming huge amounts of crops.

In swarms the size of major cities, the locusts also have affected parts of Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea, whose agriculture ministry says both the military and general public have been deployed to combat them.

Kenya’s agriculture minister has acknowledged that authorities weren’t prepared for the scope of the infestation this year. That’s not surprising, considering it’s been decades since the country’s last comparable outbreak, U.N. officials say.

The locusts also are heading toward the breadbasket of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country, in that nation’s worst outbreak in 25 years. On Thursday, startled residents of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, started reported sightings of the insects.

“I was surprised to find the locusts inside my living room,” said one resident, Mathewos Girma, showing a photo on his mobile phone. “It appears it is knocking on each and every one of our doors.”

Zebdewos Selato, an agriculture ministry official, told The Associated Press the relatively few locusts reaching Ethiopia’s capital are “leftovers” from the “massive invasion” in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Spraying is being conducted around the city to stop the outbreak from spreading elsewhere, he said.

Until the drier weather in June, more rain across the region will bring fresh vegetation to fuel further waves of locust breeding. One field in Kenya on Saturday appeared to be full of mating bright yellow locusts.

“They are trying to mate and reproduce, so we need more help and because we are racing against time,” said Salat Tutana, the chief agriculture officer in Isiolo county.

“So far we have decimated around five swarms in Samburu and Isiolo (counties) but we keep on receiving more swarms every week, and that is a lot in terms of the ecosystem,” he said. “They are destroying the environment.”

Within hours, the locusts can strip a pasture of much of its vegetation.

“That’s a very sad situation, especially for the pastoralists” whose livelihoods rely on their cattle, Tutana said.

Just hours after the spraying, the normally bouncing locusts were dozy, slow and dying. They lay scattered on the ground, crunching underfoot.

The five planes currently operating are capable of looking over this part of Kenya, Dunn said, but if there’s an increase in locusts in other parts of the country “we are going to need some more assistance, because we just don’t know how big this problem is going to be.”

___

Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, contributed.

China Gives Financial Markets $173 Billion Virus Shot

BEIJING—China’s central bank announced plans Sunday to inject 1.2 trillion yuan ($173 billion) into the economy to cushion the shock to financial markets from the outbreak of a new virus when trading resumes on Monday after a prolonged Lunar New Year holiday.

The People’s Bank of China announced several measures over the weekend aimed at stabilizing the economy as the impact of the virus spreads with cancelled flights, stepped up quarantines and other controls.

Beijing extended the usual week-long holiday by three days but markets are due to reopen Monday and many expect they will drop sharply. Elsewhere in the region. worries over the potential harm to businesses and trade from the outbreak have triggered wide swings in share prices.

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On Friday, jitters over the virus caused share prices to plunge.

The central bank statement issued Sunday said the open market operation was aimed at ensuring sufficient liquidity.

In a separate statement Saturday, the PBOC said that while markets would reopen, financial institutions should follow local quarantine regulations and try to minimize gatherings to reduce risks of spreading the virus, which has infected more than 14,000 people and killed more than 300.

That includes allowing rotating shifts, working online from home and other strategies, it said.

Regulators have also urged banks and other financial institutions to boost lending and avoid calling in debts in areas severely affected by the pandemic.

Some cities, particularly the central Chinese city Wuhan where the disease first surfaced, and nearby cities, are still in lockdown. Shanghai authorities extended the Lunar New Year holiday until Feb. 9. Universities remain closed for now.

Mainland China’s main share benchmark, the Shanghai Composite index, sank 2.8% to 2,976.53 on Jan. 23, its last day of trading before the Lunar New Year.

Chinese authorities have massive resources for intervening to staunch panic selling of shares and have deployed them in past times of crisis.

A large share of the 1.2 trillion yuan to be injected into markets will go to meeting payment obligations falling due on Monday, analysts said.

But it’s still a massive amount of funding.

“This is well beyond the Band-aid fix, and if this deluge doesn’t hold risk-off at bay, we are in for a colossal beat down,” Stephen Innes of AxiCorp. said in a client note Sunday.

He noted that any major drop shortly after the markets reopen would be a “catch up.”

“It’s not the earthquake at the open but rather the aftershocks that will drive risk sentiment on Monday,” he said.

Palestinian Authority Cuts All Ties With U.S. Over Trump’s ‘Peace Plan’

The Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, announced on Saturday that it would act immediately to cut ties with the U.S. after President Donald Trump unveiled a so-called peace plan that effectively allows Israel carte blanche to continue the occupation and theft of Palestinian land.

“We’ve informed the Israeli side … that there will be no relations at all with them and the United States including security ties,” Authority president Mahmoud Abbas told members of the Arab League in an emergency meeting called to assess options for the Palestinian people.

According to Reuters reporting:

The Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo said the plan would not lead to a comprehensive and just peace, and that the League would not cooperate with the United States in implementing it.

The ministers affirmed Palestinian rights to create a future state based on the land captured and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as capital, the final communique said.

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, among others, said there could be no peace without recognizing Palestinian rights and a comprehensive solution.

Abbas also said he had refused to look at the plan or talk to Trump on the phone about it to avoid giving the U.S. president the ability to claim Abbas had been consulted.

“Trump asked that I speak to him by phone but I said ‘no,’ and that he wants to send me a letter,” said Abbas, “so I refused to receive it.”

 

The Palestinian Authority cut all ties with the United States and Israel, including security relations, after rejecting a Middle East peace plan presented this week by President Trump https://t.co/azPvJZ3BWz pic.twitter.com/YbJVsJLXqd

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 1, 2020

As Common Dreams reported, the plan was panned by progressives, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first major party top contender to call an end to the Israeli occupation.”

“Trump’s so-called ‘peace deal’ doesn’t come close, and will only perpetuate the conflict,” said Sanders. “It is unacceptable.”

Doctors Are Failing Women With Eating Disorders

“Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America”
Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar

Rebecca Lester’s book “Famished: Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America,” attempts to cover the medical communities’ Herculean efforts to cure a wide range of eating disorders. The book focuses on the complicated relationship between the attempts to treat those who suffer from eating disorders and the apparent failure of the system to heal them. And at its heart, Lester writes, “It is critical to understand that eating disorders are not about food—not really. They are about a deep, abiding, toxic shame and self-negation that is so embedded that it may never fully be eradicated.”

The author’s professional qualifications include being an associate professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and a licensed clinical social worker. Her award-winning work, “Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent,” takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training and experiences of a group of postulants—young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns.

“Famished” is an in-depth academic book with long passages of scholarly medical language. Her research is impressive and exhaustive. It is not a casual read.

Lester follows several patients through their treatment at Cedar Grove Eating Disorders Clinic in Wisconsin, delving into the range of psychological and physical disorders that brought them there.

In addition to her academic credentials, Lester has a deeper level of qualification in writing this book: She struggled with anorexia as an adolescent:

I came dangerously close to dying from anorexia twice, once when I was eleven years old and then again when I was eighteen. I was hospitalized both times for several months and spent years in outpatient therapy in recovery. … Between the ages of about eight and twenty-six, I was, at various times, an anorexic, a bulimic, a compulsive exerciser, and a binge eater.… During those bleak years, I learned that there are an infinite number of ways to treat one’s body as a detestable, yet constant, encumbrance. I frequently used diet pills, laxatives, stimulants, and anything else I could think of to wrangle, discipline, and punish my body into some sort of semblance of acceptability and to feel, even briefly, that I deserved to exist. It never quite worked.”

Lester describes tricks that inpatients used to game the system, such as hiding food in napkins so they didn’t have to eat, and drinking a lot of water before morning weigh-ins, a practice she calls “water loading.”

She recalls the funeral of a young woman named Allison, who had been a patient at Cedar Grove. Just a few days before her death, Allison had been deemed a success story. She left the clinic healthy. However, her years of anorexia played havoc with her body; she had a heart attack and died at the age of 27.

Such is the stuff of “Famished.”

Click here to read long excerpts from “Famished” at Google Books.

Lester wants her book to address why so many patients who are treated for various eating disorders do not get better, and as she points out, remain ill, become sicker, and even die.

She writes that eating disorders are not just a collection of behaviors, of lab values, or even body weights or “cognitive distortions.” Her position is that eating disorders are physically and emotionally devastating conditions where food and eating become the means by which deep existential concerns are made manifest and struggled with.

A typical client, in a psychological profile given by many therapists, is described as a “person who is genetically and temperamentally primed for high levels of anxiety or hypervigilance, thought to be particularly sensitive to becoming a victim of an eating disorder.”

“Food is medicine and medicine is food” is the standard mantra for treatment of eating disorders. Patients are taught that food is healing. Those who suffer from eating disorders are threatened by the ingestion of food, which is charged with frightening symbolic meanings. As Lester writes, “People with anorexia are terrified of food and other substances entering their body in the same way a person with claustrophobia is afraid of small spaces.” The clinic aims to change this.

Many of Lester’s stories allow the reader an intimate relationship with the clinic’s patients. A woman named Betsy recalls how her bulimic daughter Miranda, another patient at Cedar Grove, was driving a car and stopped in the middle of a highway, unable to decide which way to turn. Among other symptoms, those suffering from this disorder have a difficult time making decisions: “The depths of misery, the swells of anxiety, and the knots of fear that will make everyday life unbearably awful and depleted thoughts with tunnel vision and shaky limbs, the foggy mind, and careening emotions: the vigilant body in full, thrashing survival mode.”

Andie was 19 when she became a patient at Cedar Grove. She did not look or act like a typical patient; she did not look sick. She appeared to be very self-assured.

Andie had been through eight weeks of residential care a year before at a different clinic and had relapsed badly.

Her parents were frustrated and out of money. Andie was able to get a bank loan to pay the treatment costs of about $1,000 a day at Cedar Grove. Most insurance companies don’t cover certain types of eating disorders, but Andie was admitted with the diagnosis of bulimia nervosa. Before being admitted, she binged and purged several times a day. Some weeks, she only left her apartment to buy food. She had serious depression as well as anxiety for years.

Andie had tried several medications, including standard antidepressants, which failed to help her. She dropped out of college, where she had excelled, stopped seeing her friends, and isolated herself from her friends and family. She was able to leave Cedar Grove eventually, but continued to subsist on low levels of food. She graduated from college; life continued to be a struggle. At times she almost killed herself. For Andie, caring for her body by eating properly was immoral.

It is stories such as these that give the casual reader a glimpse into the devastation these eating disorders cause the patient and the family.

Much of the book, however, is written more as a textbook for medical professionals than the lay reader. It references the DSM (“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”), and uses psychiatric criteria.

Lester concludes that the methods used by the medical community today are inadequate and, in fact, detrimental to those who suffer from these disorders. She espouses that our “for-profit” medical system causes undertreatment, which can result in deadly consequences:

With eating disorders, where a core part of the illness is believing one doesn’t deserve to want or need anything at all, a care system that pathologizes desire and need and withholds care is inherently and profoundly problematic, producing relationships of care that are fraught, ambivalent, and even damaging, although they can also be productive, meaningful, and healing. Understanding these complexities of care will give us insight into the cultural and social conditions of its emergence and point us toward new modes of intervention.”

Lester points out that deep angst is the basis of eating disorders. Simply put, eating disorders are not about wearing a size 0; they are about becoming a size 0:

Eating disorders, for people in the throes of one, are at heart about feeling unworthy to exist, feeling that they don’t have the right to take up space (physical, interpersonal, political, social). Eating disorders are about feeling so fundamentally wrong on all levels that the only thing one can do right is to disappear, to obliterate, to non-exist. Given this, people with eating disorders can never feel ‘sick enough’ to actually deserve notice, let alone care, despite the fact that care is what they need and crave more than anything.”

Lester goes on to say that the stigma against the illness and the lack of understanding about eating disorders impede the ability to change the treatment for this truly dangerous disease. She notes that “the really dangerous thing about bulimia is that someone can have perfectly normal labs and still be one purge away from a heart attack,” and that anorexia kills 20% of those who suffer from it, making it the deadliest of all mental illnesses.

Those who treat, study, or are afflicted with an eating disorder in the family will find excellent resources here. This is a book of sweeping research and offers some advice. But only those who are familiar with the disorder will fully understand the dimensions offered here.

 

Polling: Americans Dissatisfied with the State of the Union

WASHINGTON — The turbulence of impeachment, a contentious presidential campaign and a global virus health threat confront President Donald Trump as he prepares to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday night. But one thing about the Trump era has remained remarkably steady: public opinion on the president.

Approval of Trump has stayed persistently in negative territory, and the country is more polarized now than it has been under any other president in recent history. Polls also show Americans express significant dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and even more so with the state of politics.

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Even with those downbeat numbers, Americans have largely positive views of both the economy and how Trump is handling it.

A look at public opinion on the president and the state of the union.

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Trump is just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The Republican-controlled Senate, which is conducting the trial, narrowly rejected Democratic demands Friday to summon witnesses, all but ensuring Trump’s acquittal. Final voting on his fate is scheduled for Wednesday, on the heels of Trump’s prime-time speech the night before.

Impeachment proceedings have closely split the public. In a January poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, slightly more said the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office than said it should not, 45% to 40%. An additional 14% of those questioned said they did not know enough to have an opinion.

In the survey, 42% of Americans said they thought Trump did something illegal in his July telephone call with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and an additional 32% said he did something unethical.

A slim majority of Republicans, 54%, thought Trump did nothing wrong with Ukraine’s leader, but that share declined slightly from 64% in October. Roughly one-third of respondents said they think Trump did something unethical but not illegal, and just about 1 in 10 that he did something illegal.

___

THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY IS STRONG

Still, the president has consistently been lifted by Americans’ assessment of his handling of the economy, which boasts a low 3.5% unemployment rate and steady job growth. In January, 56% of Americans approved of the Trump’s job on the economy, according to an AP-NORC poll. That was higher than the share approving of his handling of trade negotiations, foreign policy or health care.

In the same poll, 67% said they considered the economy to be in good shape, up slightly from 61% who said that in September of 2019, and only about one-quarter expected economic conditions to worsen over the next year.

That relatively bright assessment of the economy even extends to many Democrats. About half of Democrats rate economic conditions positively, and roughly 3 in 10 approve of Trump’s handling of the issue.

___

PERVASIVE DISSATISFACTION

Just as Trump will outline his goals for the remainder of his term on Tuesday night, Americans have their own idea of what should be a priority this year. An AP-NORC poll in December found Americans identified in an open-ended question the economy, health care, immigration and the environment as top issues for the government to address in 2020.

Few expected the government to make progress on the issues most important to them.

In the same poll, just about 2 in 10 Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the country today. Nearly 6 in 10 were dissatisfied. Looking ahead, more expected things would get worse, not better.

Republicans were far more likely to express satisfaction with the state of the country, compared with Democrats, 40% to 11%. A slim majority of Republicans, 54%, anticipated improvement over the next year.

Among Democrats, 76% said they were dissatisfied, and 66% expected things to get even worse.

___

POLARIZATION

That partisan gap in assessments of the country is even wider in assessments of the president.

Eighty-nine percent of Republicans and just 7% of Democrats approved of Trump on average during the third year of his presidency, according to polling by Gallup. The 82 percentage points separating the two parties in their views of the president was greater than for any other year of any other presidency.

That persistent polarization has led to unusual stability in Trump’s approval rating. While approval ebbs and flows from poll to poll, Trump’s rating have remained within a roughly 10 percentage point range for three years. Trump’s approval rating is unlikely to change with partisans staunchly in their camps. There’s not much room for improvement among Republicans, and he’s unlikely to gain any support from Democrats.

___

REELECTION YEAR PRECEDENT

Other presidents’ approval ratings have reached lower levels than Trump’s, but Gallup polling shows Trump’s averages register lower than the averages of most recent presidents. Over the past three months, approval of Trump averaged about 43%. That’s lower than for most other recent presidents over the same time period in their first terms.

Barack Obama is one exception. Over the same period before his reelection bid, average approval was also about 43%. But Obama’s approval rating never dipped below 40% in Gallup polling, and Obama saw his rating improve slightly as his reelection approached. While Trump’s approval rating has never exceeded 46% in Gallup polling, Obama concluded his first term with an average rating just below 50%.

Democrats Return to Iowa for Final Pitch to Voters

NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa — After weeks of fits and starts, the battle to win Monday’s Iowa caucuses reaches a crescendo this weekend as Democratic presidential candidates crisscross the state eager for a breakout moment that could shake up a race dominated so far by a persistent top tier of four contenders.

For the first time this week, the six candidates making the biggest play for Iowa were all in the state. Freed from President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial for the next several days, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar quickly returned to Iowa eager to make up for lost time Saturday. Warren arrived late Friday and went straight to an impromptu event at a Des Moines bar to share a beer with dozens of cheering supporters.

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The senators joined Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang, who have had the state to themselves for much of the past month and have used that time to position themselves as above the Washington fray.

This weekend is the culmination of a year of intense campaigning in Iowa, where the leadoff caucuses will formally begin the process of selecting a Democratic nominee to take on Trump in the fall.

Many of the candidates were spending this final stretch working to boost turnout in the state’s biggest Democratic counties and population centers. They were trading the intimate town halls that have characterized much of the campaign for big, sometimes star-studded rallies. On Friday night, Sanders campaign held a rally with the indie band Bon Iver, and on Saturday, the band Vampire Weekend was to join the Vermont senator for a concert .

For all of them, their final pitch to caucusgoers comes down to the same argument: I’m the best candidate to take on Trump.

Biden has argued that the barrage of Republican attacks on him, including from Trump, who mocked Biden’s small crowd sizes during a presidential visit to the state Thursday, suggest that Trump’s team is most concerned about the former vice president winning the primary. Biden has twice unsuccessfully competed in the Iowa caucuses as a White House hopeful.

“I’m confident Americans, Republican voters, Democratic voters and independent voters want us to come together. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make progress in the areas that matter most,” he told a crowd in North Liberty.

But the public focus on unity and electability came amid a backdrop of renewed party infighting. The Democrats’ 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, again criticized Sanders for not doing enough to bring the party together after their bruising primary fight four years ago. On Friday night, at a rally Sanders didn’t attend, his supporters booed Clinton when she was mentioned by one of Sanders’ surrogates on stage.

Buttigieg used that skirmishing as a way to promote his call for generational change.

“I didn’t much enjoy as a Democrat living through the experience of 2016 and I want to make sure 2020 resembles 2016 as little as possible,” he told reporters after a rally in Waterloo.

Buttigieg went on to emphasize that the candidates “are much more aligned than you would think.”

On the stage at the event, however, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, directly called out Biden and Sanders. Buttigieg outlined what he called “a respectful difference of approach among people who share the same values, share the same goals.”

“The vice president is suggesting this is no time to take a risk on someone new. I’m suggesting this is no time to take a risk on trying to meet a fundamentally new challenge with a familiar playbook. It’s going to take something new,” he said.

Buttigieg criticized Sanders for “offering an approach that suggests it’s either revolution or it’s the status quo, and there’s nothing in between.”

Warren released new ads in Iowa that characterize the Massachusetts senator as the best candidate to unite the party and defeat Trump, while confronting head-on the concerns that a woman cannot win the presidency. Sanders emphasized his call for a revolution, arguing that he can galvanize the working class to take on Trump.

Tom Taiber, a 73-year-old from Waverly, said he isn’t worried about Democrats coming together to rally around the party’s eventual nominee, even if the primary becomes divisive.

“The family of Democrats, we’re going to have differences of opinion,” Taiber said. “But in the end, I think we’ll all come together.”

Taiber’s current plan is to start the night in Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s corner, but he may switch to Buttigieg if she’s not viable in his precinct.

The caucuses are the start of what’s sure to be a fierce month of campaigning across the four early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. but fundraising reports released on Friday underscore how important the results may be for some. Historically, struggling candidates have received a boost in fundraising after a strong showing in the caucuses that have helped them both gain and sustain momentum in the race.

Biden reported Friday he had just $9 million in reserves at the end of 2019, an underwhelming sum that lagged behind Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg. They reported having a minimum of about $5 million more than Biden in disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission before Friday’s deadline.

The results of the caucuses will also offer Democrats their first sense of how the ideological dividing lines fall within the race. The primary has become a competition among the candidates to consolidate support in two ideological categories — moderate and progressive — with no obvious leader emerging on either side.

Sanders and Warren, who largely agree on key progressive priorities such as “Medicare for All” and eliminating student debt, have long fought for the progressive mantle. Sanders and his team have been predicting victory in the caucuses in recent weeks, but Warren has one of the biggest, most seasoned operations on the ground in Iowa and is hoping that will help her make up lost ground.

Buttigieg and Biden are competing as moderates, with Klobuchar also aiming to make inroads among progressives with a stronger-than-expected finish in Iowa.

With recent polls, however, showing all four top tier candidates jumbled at the top, Biden has tried to play down expectations in recent days. He told reporters Friday that while “I expect to do well” in Iowa, the state is “not as consequential … as it has been in years past.

“I feel very strongly that we have a great firewall in South Carolina,” he said, pointing to the fourth primary contest, nearly a month away.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Tom Beaumont in Waterloo, Iowa, and Bill Barrow in North Liberty, Iowa contributed to this report.

U.S. States Join Global Push to Ban Animal-Tested Cosmetics

LAS VEGAS — A growing number of U.S. states are considering a ban on the sale or import of cosmetics that have been tested on animals, as advocates argue testing products such as lotions, shampoos and makeup on rabbits, mice and rats is cruel and outdated.

The cause has gained support from consumers and many cosmetics companies, but the biggest hurdle is China, which requires that cosmetics sold in its large, lucrative market undergo testing on animals.

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California, Nevada and Illinois all saw new laws take effect this year that ban the sale or import of animal-tested cosmetics.

The laws, which apply to tests performed after Jan. 1, aren’t expected to cause much disruption for the industry because many companies already use non-animal testing. Instead, they draw a line in the sand that puts pressure on the U.S. government to pass a nationwide ban and help end China’s requirement that most cosmetics sold in that nation of more than 1.4 billion people undergo testing on animals by Chinese regulators.

China’s policy applies to all imported cosmetics, including makeup, perfume and hair care products, along with some “special use” goods produced in China, such as hair dye, sunscreen and whitening products that make functional claims.

Animal-tested cosmetics already are banned in Europe, India and elsewhere. A ban in the United States, one of the world’s largest economies, would put further global pressure on China to end its policy and push Chinese cosmetics companies to rely on non-animal tests if they want to sell their products in the U.S.

“We’re not trying to create an island out here in Nevada,” said state Sen. Melanie Scheible, who sponsored Nevada’s law. “We are trying to join a group of other communities that have stood up and said, ‘We don’t support animal testing.’”

Animal-rights groups like Cruelty Free International and the Humane Society of the United States hope to get more states to pass bans this year.

Legislation has been introduced or will soon be made public in Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia, according to Cruelty Free International, and a national ban has been introduced in Congress since 2014, though the bipartisan measure has been slow to advance. The most recent version introduced in November marks the first time the country’s leading cosmetics trade group, the Personal Care Products Council, has become a vocal backer of the ban, support that should ease lawmaker concerns about business opposition.

The California, Nevada and Illinois laws create exemptions for any cosmetics that were tested on animals to comply with regulations of a foreign government — an exception that acknowledges the reality that most companies will see their products tested on animals if they sell in China.

China is a “big complicating factor,” said Monica Engebretson, who leads public affairs for Cruelty Free International in North America. “That’s put companies that want to enter that Chinese market in a real bind.”

Scheible said her aim in Nevada was not to punish those multinational corporations but to raise awareness and put pressure on other governments, like China, to act.

“A lot of people thought that we no longer tested on animals at all,” she said. “They thought that this was already a thing of the past.”

The bans in all three states require cosmetics sellers to use non-animal tests to prove their products are safe. Many international companies are already doing that after the European Union passed a series of similar bans on animal testing, culminating with a 2013 ban on the sale of animal-tested products.

Supporters note that science has advanced, allowing companies in most cases to use non-animal alternatives — such as human cell cultures or lab-grown human skin and eye tissue — to test whether a product or ingredient is safe.

For example, EpiDerm, a synthetic skin tissue made by Massachusetts-based MatTek Corp., is created from cells taken from skin donated during procedures such as breast reduction surgery, circumcision and tummy tuck procedures.

Products can be applied to synthetic tissue to determine whether they cause skin irritation, damage, sensitivity or other issues. That can be used in place of a testing a product on the back of a shaved rabbit, animal rights supporters say.

Some of the biggest names in personal care and beauty, including Avon, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, have used MatTek’s tissues for testing.

Carl Westmoreland, a safety scientist with Unilever, said the European Union ban drove more innovation in non-animal testing. Companies like Unilever, trade groups and advocates are among those working with Chinese regulators and scientists to push for new rules, helping to familiarize them with procedures and results from non-animal tests.

“They have been changing and are continuing to change,” he said, noting China in recent years has allowed some cosmetics produced within the country to avoid animal testing.

Francine Lamoriello, executive vice president for global strategies at the Personal Care Products Council said it’s a slow process, but Chinese regulators are working to accept non-animal tests.

“They’re having conferences. They really seem to be quite motivated to do as best as they can to accept and validate certain methods,” she said.

The Personal Care Products Council supports most of the state legislation but is pushing for a nationwide law instead of a patchwork of rules across the country.

Similar to the state laws, the proposed ban before Congress would exempt cosmetics required to undergo testing in China. It would allow those products to be sold in the U.S. as long as sellers relied on additional, non-animal tests to show they are safe.

California was first to pass the legislation in 2018, a move that’s part of the state’s pattern of wielding its status as the world’s fifth-largest economy to push change.

“That’s the beauty of doing things in California,” said Judie Mancuso with the group Social Compassion in Legislation who pressed for that state’s ban. “You set the stage, you set the standard, and others grab it and grow.”

___

Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Iraqi Blocs Choose New PM-Designate After Weeks of Jockeying

BAGHDAD — Former communications minister Mohammed Allawi was named prime minister-designate by rival Iraqi factions Saturday after weeks of political deadlock.

The choice comes as the country weathers troubled times, including ongoing anti-government protests and the constant threat of being ensnared by festering U.S.-Iran tensions.

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The selection of Allawi, 66, to replace outgoing Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi was the product of many back-room talks over months between rival parties.

In Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Iraq’s four-month anti-government protest movement, demonstrators rejected Allawi’s candidacy. Demonstrators, who have long said they would not accept a candidate chosen by the establishment, erected portraits of the new premier-designate crossed with an “X.” Some chanted “Allawi out!”

But many feared they would clash with the hundreds of followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who recently reversed a decision to withdraw support from the protest movement. Officials and analysts said that move was to gain leverage on the street as a deadline to select a new premier drew near.

“The square doesn’t want him, but the problem is since Muqtada has sided with (the elites) the square cannot refuse him,” said civil activist Kamal Jaban. “Otherwise there will be bloodshed.”

Al-Sadr’s followers returned in the hundreds the Friday night, three witnesses said, bringing tents and supplies and re-occupying a strategic high-rise overlooking the square known as the Turkish Restaurant, as well as the Jumhuriya Bridge, which leads to the Green Zone.

Al-Sadr issued a statement saying Allawi’s selection was “the wish of the people,” and asked protesters to carry on with the anti-government demonstrations.

“The real rebellious Iraqi youth who want change and reform are alone tonight,” said Noor, an activist in Tahrir Square.

On Wednesday, President Barham Saleh gave parliamentary blocs until Feb. 1 to select a premier candidate, or said he would exercise his constitutional powers and choose one himself.

In a pre-recorded statement posted online, Allawi called on protesters to continue with their uprising against corruption and said he would quit if the blocs insist on imposing names of mi nisterial appointees.

“If it wasn’t for your sacrifices and courage there wouldn’t have been any change in the country,” he said addressing anti-government protesters. “I have faith in you and ask you to continue with the protests.”

Allawi was born in Baghdad and served as communications minister first in 2006 and again between 2010-2012. He resigned from his post after a dispute with former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Abdul-Mahdi called Allawi to congratulate him on the appointment, according to a statement from his office.

Parliament is expected to put his candidacy to a vote in the next session once a formal letter declaring Allawi as a nominee from the president is submitted, after which he has 30 days to formulate a government program and select a Cabinet of ministers.

According to the constitution, a replacement for Abdul-Mahdi should have been identified 15 days after his resignati on in early December under pressure from the protest movement. Instead, it has taken rival blocs nearly two months of jockeying to select Allawi as their consensus candidate.

Abdul-Mahdi’s rise to power was the product of a provisional alliance between parliament’s two main blocs — Sairoon, led by cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and Fatah, which includes leaders associated with the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units headed by Hadi al-Amiri.

In the May 2018 election, neither coalition won a commanding plurality, which would have enabled it to name the premier, as stipulated by the Iraqi constitution. To avoid political crisis, Sairoon and Fatah forged a precarious union with Abdul-Mahdi as their prime minister.

Until Allawi’s selection, al-Sadr had rejected the candidates put forward largely by Fatah, officials and analysts said. Sairoon appears to have agreed to his candidacy following a tumultuous two weeks. The radical cleric held an anti-U.S. rally attended by tens of thousands and withdrew support for Iraq’s mass anti-government protest movement, only to reverse the decision later.

“Sairoon has approved and Fatah has approved,” a senior Iraqi official said.

If elected by parliament, Allawi will have to contend with navigating Iraq through brewing regional tensions between Tehran and Washington. Tensions skyrocketed after a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s airport killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The tumultuous event brought Iraq close to the brink of war and officials scrambling to contain the fallout.

The presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil has become the focus of Iraqi politics in the wake of the strike. Parliament passed a non-binding resolution for their ouster and Abdul-Mahdi had openly supported withdrawal.

Abdul-Mahdi’s resignation was precipitated by ongoing mass protests in Baghdad and southern Iraq. Protesters are calling for new executive leadership, snap elections and electoral reforms.

Monarch Butterfly Activist Eulogized in Mexico

OCAMPO, Mexico — Hundreds of farmers and agricultural workers thronged the funeral of activist Homero Gómez González on Friday, and the homage to him was like a tribute to the monarch butterfly he so staunchly defended.

The butterflies’ annual migration, threatened by logging, avocado farming and climate and environmental change, has also represented a ray of hope and income for the impoverished, pine-clad mountains of Michoacan state.

Nobody worked harder than Gómez González — whose body was found this week at the bottom of a holding pond with a head wound — to stop logging, reforest and bring tourists to the butterflies” wintering grounds.

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In an area where crime, construction work and wood cutting provide some of the only sources of income, Gómez González provided a way out, ensuring income for the communal farmers who actually own the land in the butterfly reserve.

“Thanks to him many of you had work, or more work — those who sell food in the reserve, those who sell their handicrafts, those who bring their horses to carry visitors into the reserve.,” Rev. Saul Saucedo said in the funeral homily.

It may sound like low-wage jobs, but it is that tenuous economy that keeps the pine and fir trees from being cut down and preserves the butterflies’ marvelous migration from the United States and Canada each year.

It also feeds the family of communal farmer Raúl García González,.

“When there’s no work here, I go out and look for day labor jobs,” said the stringy, weather-beaten García González.

Like many of the communal land owners, he fears Gómez González’s death could add to the already bad reputation that drug cartel violence has given to the western state of Michoacan.

“We hope that all the people who come to the reserve will feel safe, because what happened to him was an accident,” the farmer said.

But the death was not so clear. Autopsy results showed Gómez González drowned in the holding pond after leaving a party Jan. 13, but they also showed he had a head wound.

There would have been no shortage of people for whom life would have been easier if Gómez González wasn’t around.

García recalled how, in 2019, Gómez González led hundreds of communal farmers in a demonstration in the nearby town of Angangueo to demand the town pay for water it receives from the mountain streams that are born on their properties.

They never got an answer.

While known as a friendly, big-hearted man who liked to pose for photographs surrounded by the swarms of black and orange butterflies that roost in trees here each winter, Gómez González was a leader and a community activist — a dangerous profession in Mexico, where dozens are killed each year.

Son Homero Gómez Valencia, 19, said his father could organize angry, resolute demonstrations, like the time he led farmers in taking over the state capitol building in the city of Morelia to demand development aid.

“He fought for his town, and that fills me with pride,” said Gómez Valencia. “A lot of the things we have are due to that struggle, which took many years. He fought against a thousand things.”

One of those enemies were illegal loggers, who threatened to punch gaps in the protective tree cover needed by the butterflies to survive winter chills. He then persuaded fellow farmers to replant cleared land with trees.

By local accounts, he managed to reforest about 150 hectares (370 acres) of previously cleared land.

“He taught us to be a united people,” his son said.

In Mexico, that can be a dangerous thing to do. London-based Global Witness counted 15 killings of environmental activists in Mexico in 2017 and 14 in 2018. In an October 2019 report, Amnesty International said 12 had been killed in the first nine months of that year.

“Something strange is happening, because they’re finishing off all the activists, the people who are doing something for society,” said Amado Gómez, the victim’s brother.

A few hours after the body was found on Wednesday, Michoacan state prosecutors said an initial review indicated a drowning and found no signs of trauma, but a statement Thursday night said more detailed autopsy results produced evidence of the head injury.

Authorities gave no other information on the injury and did not say how it might have been inflicted. They said an investigation continued, suggesting the case wasn’t considered an accident.

Prosecutors said robbery appeared not to be a potential motive, since almost $500 in cash was found on his body.

On Thursday night, mourners in threadbare clothes amid a few candles and simple floral arrangements underscored the tough struggle being played out in the nesting grounds, beset by grinding poverty and gang violence.

“I would like to ask the authorities to do their job and do more to protect activists like my brother, because lately in Mexico a lot of activists have died,” Amado Gómez said. “With his death, not only my family lost a loved one; but the whole world, and the monarch butterfly and the forests lost, too.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador described Gómez Gonzàlez’s death as “regrettable” and “painful” in remarks Thursday.

Look to Iowa for a 2020 Election Preview

What can 24 hours in Iowa tell you about the political circus that is the 2020 election? A lot. You can start by hearing Iowans describe their values: that civic identity that they take great pride in. And you can contrast it to what the president’s re-election campaign has put forth as its values, as seen in the medium that Trump knows best. Not political tradition, but Trump-branded campaign merchandise.

Let’s start with the high road. Every state has its political vanities. So, it was no accident that one of the first events held Wednesday by Mayor Pete (Buttigieg), to make a closing argument for his long-shot candidacy, was in Independence, Iowa, at the Heartland Acres agricultural center and museum. The youngest Democratic presidential candidate is hoping that voters will be declaring their independence from candidates whose careers lay more in the past than in the future.

But it wasn’t the eloquent Mayor Pete, but Dan Callahan, a county Democratic Party commissioner, who articulated the Iowan values that public-minded citizens can applaud. Callahan, who is from Independence, graduated from Independence High School, attended the University of Northern Iowa, joined the Iowa National Guard—you get it—praised Buttigieg’s Iowan, and even Midwestern, values. You respect people. You treat people with dignity. You understand service. “That’s what I am looking for in a president,” he said, introducing you know who.

“We are now four days away from a historic Iowa caucus after a year of campaigning,” said Buttigieg, moments later, who went on to remind a room of 150 voters (most were over 50) that no nominee who was not young, inspiring, forward-looking and not part of Washington’s establishment (i.e., John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) had gone on to win.

Let’s skip, for the moment, that Mayor Pete’s venue could have held many more people had the conference center’s folding walls been retracted. (Trump’s Drake University arena rally was also relatively under-attended, the t-shirt vendors said, but we’ll get to that in a bit.) The town meeting was as classic and cogent and substance-filled as a public forum could or should be.

For example, the first question was about term limits. Buttigieg’s reply reeled off where he’d start wrestling with the beast of reforming democracy. There’s stopping gerrymanders, countering voter suppression, making voter registration easier, making Election Day a holiday, even reforming the Electoral College, he said.

“Some folks think I’m really far out on this, but I think, in the future, when we have elections for president, we should make sure the person who got the most votes actually gets to be president,” he said, drawing claps. “And then you’ve got the role of money in politics, Citizens United, a [Supreme Court] decision that holds that a corporation has the same political soul as you and I do.”

Voting Booth’s reporter came to Iowa’s Caucuses looking for how new technology is shaping the organizing, vote counting and spin, but we feel obliged to report other tidbits. Mayor Pete’s mention of political soul now takes us to Trump.

Callahan would not have known it at the time he briefly spoke. But he laid down the moral tests (respect, dignity, service) that Vice President Mike Pence would also try to lay claim to in his gushing introduction of President Trump.

Pence is a former radio host. He knows the power of words and tight delivery. And he is very good at it. Not only did Pence claim, for Republicans and the president, flag, faith, family, country, patriotism, militarism, security, free speech, bearing arms, creating jobs, and, “in three short years, we made America great again,” but his closing was perfectly synced with Trump’s newest official merchandise.

After describing Trump as a fighter who has fought the left and mainstream media to serve real Americans, the vice president said, “Now, Iowa, it’s our time to fight for him! It [the battle] is on!”

I’m not going to quote Trump. More notable than his smears (“Pocahontas,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Mini-Mike,” etc.) or attack on Bernie Sanders (“America will not be a socialist country”) were the slogans on his latest official t-shirt line. We are no longer in the era of red MAGA baseball hats.

Time and Trump marketing have marched on. The lines and attitude that brought the biggest cheers of the night were now available on piles of t-shirts and hats. If Trump has his way, the 2020 season will turn into a street brawl. For $20 a pop, your apparel could blare:

“Trump 45: IT AIN’T A MISTAKE SNOWFLAKE”

“GOD, GUNS & TRUMP”

“IMPEACH THIS” [with Trump pointing two middle fingers]

“WHO’S YOUR DADDY—TRUMP—Make America Great Again”

“IF YOU DON’T LIKE—TRUMP… Make America Great Again—THEN YOU PROBABLY WON’T LIKE ME”

The most snarky, which one campaign vendor hawked as their “X-rated” shirt, said, “TRUMP—2020—FUCK YOUR FEELINGS.”

That last one was a sight to behold. Forget those dusty Iowan values of respect, dignity and service. At the Trump rally, the biggest applause lines were the ones where Trump boasted or bragged of triumphs by vanquishing foes. You’ve heard it all before and will again. Trump and his supporters were real patriots. They were victorious. They were winners because others are losers. Their adversaries were worthy of mockery, were less than deserving, and on and on. And for $20 (“credit is okay, but we like cash”), you can spread the word.

What can 24 hours in Iowa tell you about 2020’s whirlwind? A lot. Callahan’s Iowan values seemed like a deer that would soon be caught in the headlights of Trump’s loud, cynical and sadistic marketing. Nothing about Trump’s GOP is conservative, especially his marketing. It is designed to incite and be noticed.

Perhaps 8,000 or 9,000 people attended Trump’s indoor arena rally and outdoor overflow-crowd video screen section, according to various estimates. Only 150 were at one of Mayor Pete’s Thursday events. But I did ask Trump’s campaign vendors what they thought of the turnout at Des Moines’ Drake University.

Intriguingly, more than one said that it was weak, compared to other states. One wondered aloud if the GOP would lose Iowa. They shrugged and said they were heading to New Hampshire next. I didn’t see hordes buying up the wares, but I didn’t stick around for a final assessment as the crowd left. I’d seen enough.

Twenty-four hours in Iowa can be revealing. At Democratic events, many people said they were still weighing choices. But if they are weighing who is best suited to take on Trump, they might consider how their choice would respond to his latest campaign merchandise. The 2020 campaign isn’t heading into the gutter. It’s already there.

 

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.